Where My Vegans At?

Earlier this year, I wrote a post about my bad experience with veganism, which I decided not to post. Truthfully, I was unprepared and uneducated on everything that came with the lifestyle. Let me break down the scenario for y’all. The day before I was set to begin my new life as a vegan, my fiancé and I went to the grocery store and spent around $200 on the purchase of our new vegan food. FYI: He’s from the country, so giving up any form of meat for him was torture, but he said he would try for me. So, we have all this food, right? We have plenty of green vegetables, a variety of beans, quinoa, bean burgers. The list goes on and on, and you know they had to be organic this and gluten-free that, so we spent $200 on about 5 things!(Lol, I’m totally exaggerating, but the point is that it wasn’t cheap!) On Day 1, we were good! We were ready to slay that vegan life. We had a smoothie for breakfast, a salad for lunch and bean burgers and sweet potato fries for dinner. Day 2, I decided to make a vegan pasta using the vegan meat substitute in the sauce. After taking a few bites, we were like, “It’s cool, but it tastes just like the bean burger.” We ate it even though it wasn’t our favorite meal. On day 3, I made vegan tacos using a chicken substitute. It smelled wonderful, but the only problem was that it tasted just like the pasta, which tasted just like the bean burgers. We both looked at each other, tossed those tacos in the trash, and I made REAL chicken tacos that night.

At that point, I realized that due to the intensity of the lifestyle change, I had to do more research before committing to this ever again, which I’ve been doing lately. Two months ago, I decided to give this lifestyle a real chance and conduct the research to help me succeed for the following 30 days. I drank plenty of water and ate a lot more fruits, vegetables, nuts, and grains. When I first started the vegan diet earlier in the year, I was so focused on what I couldn’t eat as opposed to all of the things that I can eat, which I wasn’t eating before. Veganism gets you in the kitchen, OKKKUR! It was a lot easier than I expected and the benefits were AMAZING. I even finished my last two weeks by doing a raw diet until 4pm and eating cooked food after. I wasn’t as hungry and I got full a lot faster with less food. I ended up losing 12 pounds in that month, and I wasn’t even working out as hard or as much as I usually do. I later realized that the issue was that I was not ready to give up my old lifestyle. I’m no vegan expert, so please don’t come for me my fellow plant-based eaters, but I think I went into the lifestyle change with the wrong idea. Veganism isn’t about finding a substitute for everything that you were eating before on the SAD diet. Quick tidbit: If you do enough research on veganism, you’ll see the acronym SAD quite often. SAD stands for Standard American Diet, which is pretty sad for the most part anyway, so it works. You can’t believe that a bean burger will taste like beef, because it’s not beef. You can’t assume that your vegan spaghetti or vegan chicken tacos will taste like authentic meat, because you will be sadly disappointed as I was when I first gave this lifestyle a try. Most of the fake vegan meat is really bad for you anyway, so if losing weight as a vegan is the goal, then the processed foods are not the way to go. Instead, focus on fruits and vegetables that you’ve never tried before. There are plenty that I wasn’t eating before that is now my favorite. You can literally put avocados on anything! So, here I am in September giving this lifestyle another go. I have one month until the seamstress will start finalizing my dress for the wedding, so I’m back on it. If you already are vegan, what are some of your favorite dishes? How was your transition? Let me know your experience! For anyone out there thinking of going vegan, here are my tips:

DO YOUR RESEARCH

Focus on the things you CAN eat not what you can’t.

Prepare your meals if you’re going out with friends/traveling or you will be forced to eat fries and a salad wherever you go.

Experiment with new recipes and ingredients. It’s fun!

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Asia Vallier

Born in Lafayette, Louisiana. Raised in Houston, Texas. Poetry, music, theater, and movies have always intrigued me, and all things artistic live at the core of who I am. I've always kept a composition notebook at my side at all times whether that be for journaling, writing music or writing my ideas. At some point, I realized that what I was searching for to express myself had been there all along in my writing. I hope to inspire and invoke thought into each and every one of my readers. Blessings!
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2 thoughts on “Where My Vegans At?”

Hi Asia! Love your post, a lot of these points resonated with me. I’d be really happy if you checked out my blog, i have written about my own journey to veganism too (: Peace xhttp://www.ahimsa-vegan.com